The letters that Cicero addressed to his wife during the period of his exile show that he hoped that Terentia acted publicly to look after his interests. If we assume that a person’s self-image depends necessarily on the I-You relationship (AMOSSY, 2010: 105), the present paper will explore how Cicero’s discursive picture of Terentia could be seen not only as a way of increasing his possibilities of self-fashioning in a moment when his public identity was seriously under threat, but also as a strategy aimed at shaping his addressee as a key factor to ensure his reditus.